


Connect

by spuffyduds



Category: due South
Genre: 100-1000 Words, Episode Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-06
Updated: 2010-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-05 22:18:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spuffyduds/pseuds/spuffyduds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Takes a different turn after an event in "Mountie on the Bounty."</p>
    </blockquote>





	Connect

**Author's Note:**

> Takes a different turn after an event in "Mountie on the Bounty."

When Ray's fist connects Fraser can actually feel his brain thump against the inside of his skull, and it shakes loose a nonsensical scrap of verse. "Journeys end in lovers meeting" echoes into his head for no reason at all, and keeps repeating while he looks at Ray to see if this was a friendly sparring jab that went wrong, to see if it's a mistake, to see if it's anything but what he sees, which is Ray looking at him like. Like he hates him.

Fraser walks.

He walks a lot over the next few days. During his lunch, after work because he's not liasing, because dead tired is the only way he can sleep, the only way he can lie down on his cot without feeling the bounce in his head and the punch grinding his jaws together, without seeing Ray giving him that flat dead look.

It's not how he used to see Ray, every time he lay down alone on his cot. And he always knew that was inappropriate, and presumptuous, and unlikely at best, but now he knows it was laughably stupid.

It's four days before Ray knocks on the consulate door. Fraser lets him in silently, turns around and leads him to the formal sitting room. It's after hours, but he's not walking Ray to his bedroom this time, not sitting next to him on the creaking cot while Ray talks about Stella.

They sit on opposite ends of the very expensive sofa, and Fraser's not looking at Ray, and then Ray says, softly, "Look. I'm sorry. I'm really, God, I'm sorry. But you have got to stop trying to get me _killed_. I don't know why you think that's okay. Getting me killed is _not okay_."

Which is, of course, utterly logical. So Fraser doesn't know why it makes him suddenly furious, why for the first time he would like to hit Ray back. Until he opens his mouth to apologize and what comes out instead is, "You didn't mind, the first day. You looked like—like you didn't mind." You looked like one of the prankster gods, beaming up at me from where you'd fallen on the lakeshore. Set on fire and half-drowned and shot, and you were _grinning_ at me like it was your best trick ever. And you kept coming back, and I thought that was what you were coming back _for_.

Fraser looks across at Ray, bewildered, no idea what to do with…what he just realized he's been doing.

And Ray nods at him like that makes perfect sense. And says, "Yeah, well, that first day. Right. But I'm not—I don't kind of—I don't _want_ to get killed, now, Frase."

Oh. "That's good, Ray," Fraser says. And Ray nods and stands up and says, "See you tomorrow," goes still and waits for an answer.

"Yes. Of course." And Ray's gone, but Fraser sits in his corner of the sofa for a long time, trying to work out what all that meant.

 

\--END--


End file.
